Just curious... anyone know why NIGHT OF THE HUNTER's Blu MSRP is $49.99? The DVD is $39.99 and the $49.99 price point is pretty rare for them.

It's 2 Blu-rays - there's four hours of extras, not including the commentary.

MSRP is $49.95 just like Seven Samurai, well worth it for both.

It's two discs. Same price as other 2 disc Blu-Ray sets like Seven Samurai and Che.

The Cary, NC store has been very customer friendly - they are well aware of the sale and the $5 coupons and even allow multiple uses (though ask before walking up with a stack of stuff).

Avoid the Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh - not a good selection, and clerks pretend to have never seen the $5 coupon and always ask for a manager's approval.

Southpoint Mall in Durham, NC has a good selection, but only allowed one coupon use...but they'd accidently stuck a 50% off sticker on "Delicatessen" and honored it ($14.01 out the door).

Peter

I picked up my first order at the post office yesterday and am looking forward to watching all of them as soon as I can. The titles I ordered this time were:

Breathless
Black Orpheus
Charade
Crumb
House
The Magician
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Paths of Glory
Seven Samurai
Carnival of Souls
The Devil and Daniel Webster

I think I'm definitely watching House tonight. I figure I'll probably like, if not love, it since my tastes often run toward the bizarre.

On a different note, I see the majority of people here seem to buy their Criterions at the store as opposed to ordering online. I guess that makes sense if you have a location nearby, or even several in some cases. The closest location to me is well over an hour away and between price of gas and the fact I have other things to do with my time I guess I'll probably always just order them online. At least I do miss out on all the drama with the coupons some people are experiencing even if I end up spending a bit more. The AAA discount does give me 10% so that's fine by me. Still, I guess it's cool to walk into a store and see a nice display of Criterions; I've never even seen one Criterion in a store.

FYI, THE THIN RED LINE is almost impossible to find. It's backordered at the warehouse and isn't available at any of the local Los Angeles stores. That and PATHS OF GLORY (which I did get) seem to be the White Whales of this sale.

We went there today and their overall selection wasn't great. However, they did have multiple copies of most of the movies in stock unlike the stores back home. I did pickup The Darjeeling Limited. Too bad we have to leave NC tomorrow as it has been fun and the barbecue is fantastic here.

I can't find TTRL and House BDs at any LA stores either. I was lucky and was able to pick up Paths of Glory on monday.

Does anybody know how long they take to re-stock in stores?

I am going all caps as a warning to everyone simply buying ever Criterion blu because they can: DO NOT BUY ANTICHRIST UNLESS YOU HAVE ALREADY SEEN IT. I can not emphasize enough that it is not a pleasant film, and some like me found it downright silly and ridiculously pretentious just for the sake of doing so - which is pretty much what Lars Von Trier does anyway. But he's gotten worse, and this film sucked. I hated it. And I am not alone. so be careful with this one.

I will disagree with others on Ride With the Devil, however - it's one of the best, if not THE best, films ever made about the Civil War. I highly recommend it. As I do the Magician. Night of the Hunter is an absolute must - one of the best films of the era. Mitchum is amazing.

Hunger was very meh for me....also part of the "slow cinema" genre popular among indie auteurs. Very little substance, and even less context/story to go with the visuals. it looks pretty, but is pretty vapid imo. Others love it though, so I don't know....it's a pretty mediocre title overall compared to the others, and I would again recommend netflixing it first.

there have been multiple Paths of Glory's in KC metro stores...the real white whale for some reason is the Three Silent Classics by Josef Von Sternberg set. that's NOWHERE....and also so back-ordered they can't even order it in the stores right now (Like TRL). Pretty weird.

normally they restock 3 or 4 times a week and have continual streams of whatever is selling being restocked. I know the store closest to me got a bunch of House blu-rays in just yesterday. BUT - in the case of Thin Red Line and a few others, they have none in their warehouses anywhere, so the simple answer is: No one knows how long it will be. They could get a pallet of them Monday and send them out immediately.....or it could be two weeks.

However, this same exact thing happened with Red Shoes in the July sale, and the first week no one could get one and they canceled all on-line orders. But in the middle of the second week they got a ton of them and sent them out so by the next friday there were ten in every store. My guess is that we'll just have to be patient for Thin Red Line and by next weekend they'll start showing up in stores.

No BN in Los Angeles area had The Thin Red Line when the sale began. So, I just ordered that online from within a store and was able to apply the $5 off coupon. As for Paths of Glory, I saw about 10 copies of blu-ray at The Grove tonight.

Interesting. I really wanted this set so I checked the local store inventory as soon as the sale began. None of the local stores had it so on Wednesday I went to the store with coupons in hand and placed a ship to home order for the Sternberg and Night of the Hunter BD.
I just checked my order status and it shows an expected ship date of Nov. 16th (release date) for Night of the Hunter and Nov. 23rd for the Sternberg. Interestingly, it will let me cancel NotH but not the Sternberg set.

I haven't found it in my area, either...

Guys, all my local stores were out of Paths of Glory, and when I ordered a copy Friday night, they said it would take an estimated two weeks since there were none in the warehouse.

Lo and behold Saturday morning I get a call from B&N and it arrived that morning. Apparently the warehouse was out because they had shipped out so many. I picked up Paths of Glory that night, and there were two or three more copies still at the store.

If your store is out of stock, have them order it. You have nothing to lose.

What do you by "ordered that online from within a store"?

Thanks (to you also, asarg). I get it now.

Re: well worth it. Absolutely... NIGHT OF THE HUNTER has been on my "to see" list for ages and will be a blind buy (thanks to the BN sale!). I'd re-buy SEVEN SAMURAI but I bought the two-disc DVD soon after it's release and, money being tight, can't currently justify a triple dip. That money's being considered for a blind buy of THIN RED LINE.

Regarding The Thin Red Line, which is impossible to find anywhere in Los Angeles. I asked the woman behind the counter if she had that title in stock. After saying no, she immediately offered to order it for me and have it shipped to my home. I reluctantly agreed, but said that I had a member $5 off coupon that I wanted to apply to the order. She said, 'no problem.' In the end, it cost me $2 more than normal because i didn't get the 10% in-store discount. But, I can't really complain.

So far I have bought:

Charade
Paths of Glory
House

I went into Ultimate Electronics today and they broke street day on the Antichrist BLU and I managed to price match it to the B&N 50% Off sale. They put it in at $19.99 on top of a couple other good sales they had. B&N Refused to break street date even though Ultimate had, so a few days early, but still good deal!

So far I've picked up Last Emperor, Bottle Rocket, Darjeeling Limited, Ride with the Devil and Walkabout. Hopefully they will be good since apart from Walkabout and Last Emperor they are blind buys.
I wanted to get House and Thin Red Line, but still out of them. I asked at the movies and music counter, but they only gave the option to ship to store. How and where do you do a ship to home order and how do you go about applying the $5 off coupon?
I also wanted to pick up the complete Monterey Pop BD boxset, but would the 15% off price give you a lower price than using the $5 off coupon?
I was also thinking about Seven Samurai and Gimme Shelter? Would any of you recommend either of these? Are there any other Kurosawa movies that are recommended? I've never seen any of his movies and normally I stay away from most Criterions because they are too far off mainstream, but I'm trying to change that with this sale In fact when I saw in this thread people were buying Breathless I thought it was strange that the Richard Gere movie was a Criterion release. I thought the same thing about Kicking and Screaming (Will Ferrell) a couple of years ago
Oh yeah, I've also picked up Che which I hope should be good. Thinking about Paths of Glory since I like Kubrick and considering Spartacus, but only saw the DVD version.
Also saw Ran in the Criterion section, but that's not a Criterion is it?
If all else fails should I order House and Thin Red Line online for $18 each or is it safe to wait until the next sale and grab them instore then?
Btw a lady in front of me with no membership/coupons bought about 30 Criterions because she thought Criterion was having problems and going out of business, but she felt stupid when the cashier told her the sale is twice a year

The top 12 and 17 out of the top 20 Blu-rays on B & N's website are Criterions. So are the rest of the top 40, other than the two editions of Sound of Music. Overall, 52 of the top 60 spots belong to Criterions. Pretty impressive.

other than I doubt it takes any significant quantity for a title to rank at the top of B&N's best seller list for movies

Second go around. Love this sale.